Pa. roads funding comes down to wire, yet again

Saturday, November 9, 2013

We’ve finally reached the point where state lawmakers will either spend the money to maintain the size and improve the integrity of Pennsylvania’s infrastructure system, or punt it off once again for a legislative session to come.

They’ve got five session days over the next two weeks to make it happen, after more than two years of pushing by the Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration.

They failed once before, during the last legislative session. If it happens again, the short-term result will be tens of thousands of stranded public transit riders, blown agreements to match union concessions, and new weight restrictions on 250 bridges statewide.

Not to mention general and ever-increasing wear and tear on steel and concrete that — contrary to lawmakers’ apparent belief — cannot miraculously regenerate its structural integrity.

That’s straight from the mouth of state Secretary of Transportation Barry Schoch, who spoke with some of Digital First Media’s Pennsylvania editors last week as part of a full court press by the Corbett administration on the eve of the do-or-die session days this week and next.

The overriding theme? Pay now, or pay (more) later.

This is a problem that not only will not go away, it will also get worse and more expensive as time goes on. The result will be bigger maintenance backlogs, less money to deal with them, and a tangible reduction in the size of Pennsylvania’s transportation infrastructure. Those 250 newly weight-restricted bridges would be a prime example.

The process started last year when the Senate passed a bill providing $2.5 billion mainly by uncapping the oil franchise tax on the wholesale price of gasoline, and by increasing PennDOT services fees. That bill passed the Senate on a bipartisan 45-5 vote but died after House members balked at the Senate’s reluctance to go along with a plan to privatize the state liquor distribution system.

Now, the quid pro quo centers on House-sought prevailing wage changes for road projects. Schoch said compromise legislation is pending to provide $2.3 to $2.35 billion for road repairs, and at least $420 million for public transit.

Points of contention include a $100 surcharge on moving violations to help fund public transit, changes to how maintenance is defined in terms of prevailing wage contracts, and a general opposition from House conservatives to uncap the oil franchise tax in phases over five years, which they equate to a broad-based tax increase. Unions, Schoch said, are generally split over the prevailing wage proposals, which also include increasing the project size that triggers prevailing wage requirements from $25,000 to $100,000.

In short, lots of moving parts remain, with not a lot of time to settle them.

But this amounts to normal legislative business. This is their job, as Schoch put it: To make difficult decisions on behalf of voters to whom roads represent their most frequently used government service.

This is where public safety, personal finance and economic development must be prioritized over narrow and ideology-driven special interests. Lawmakers afraid of political risk due to revenue generation should be ashamed by the example of a governor who almost wholly campaigned on a promise never to raise fees or taxes.

Schoch said the funding amounts at play will likely serve us for the next 10 years. By then, automotive technology will have progressed to the point where fuel taxes will become as obsolete as the internal combustion engine. That means an entirely new model for funding roads will need to be devised. But if lawmakers are hoping to hold the status quo until we get to that point, they will only succeed in creating a dystopian ruin where only a few safe roads and bridges remain open for traffic statewide.

Yes, fixing roads and bridges costs big money.

Yes, fixing roads and bridges will result in increased PennDOT fees and slightly higher gas prices. (And by slightly, we mean by 5 to 8 cents next year in a market where gas prices fluctuate by 20 or 30 cents on a monthly basis.)

This is as close to a legislative and effective governance no-brainer as we’re ever like to get. Let’s make it happen now, so we don’t have to make it happen for twice the money later.